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Wednesday, February 7, 2007

A City That Was Lost

We went in search of "A City Lost" cache and it was an awesome cache.

We took Troy’s truck and went 4 wheeling behind Wal-Mart. The cache was located just off one of the 4 wheel trails in some palmetto bushes. Conner made the find and he was so excited. He got to pull the cache out and open it and then pick what he wanted to keep first. He chose a key chain and Rook took an orange parachute man. We left a tool kit and an arrow head in a bottle from Cherokee, North Carolina and our calling card. I think the arrow head was a trinket Savanna picked up on one of our trips to see Kim in Virginia but she didn’t want it anymore and donated it to the geocaching cause.
The information sheet for the cache suggested driving down some of the trails to find some “interesting” things. The first trail led us to a beautiful little lake (I didn’t realize there was any undeveloped property like this still in Destin). The next trail led us to a nice sized mud hole. After some convincing from me, Troy decided to drive through it – but not before getting out and poking at it with a stick and then doing some heavy duty staring LOL His sense of adventure took over and Yeehaw we were flying through it! It was a lot of fun for me and the boys really liked it too. I think Troy just felt a sense of relief that his truck wasn’t stuck in the mud. As we came around the next bend there was a private property sign nailed to a tree but in green paint someone had painted HI! Over it so we felt kind of welcome. Around the next bend was a huge rock with black writing painted on it saying Go Back Or Die. Hmmm. We decided to take our chances. Around the next bend sat a full sized Greyhound type bus that was completely burned. It was a shocking site because we had barely been able to squeeze our truck through the trail so how did they get that thing in there – and what in the heck happened to it?
Next to this bus are huge old concrete pillars forming a square. Several other pillars were around also like there used to be buildings there. The cache is named the Lost City so I wonder if there was something there years ago.
As we’re looking at this bus we can see that there’s an old boat around the next bend so we continue on and around that last bend was the most amazing sight I’ve ever seen. As far as the eye could see there was stuff. Old demolished cars, burned up tractors, huge metal canister type things, semi trailer cargo containers, rusted out dumpsters, piles and piles of pier pilings, a good solid acre of orange roof tiles, pipes, a round little igloo building and most shocking of all were the steps to a full sized jet airplane – the kind they roll out to the plane when it lands if the runway doesn’t connect to the terminal. Where do you get steps to an airliner? There was a huge dome like structure built out of huge round black tubes. Everything was burned up, shot out, tore up or just plain rotten and everywhere we looked there was something bizarre. A rusted out pickup truck has been driven into the lake up to almost the roof, another boat is sunk with just the bow showing and another boat is washed up derelict on the bank. There was a full sized single wide trailer all burned up and laying on it’s side. There was a 4 wheel trail in and around all of this so we just drove around, constantly shocked at the bizarre things we’d see. It didn’t have a communal dump feel to it at all, it seems to be some guy’s land and that’s where he puts his stuff. Some of that stuff has been there for years. There wasn’t any trash or garbage, just the debris from whatever item it was near. Troy says he thinks the guy buys army surplus lots and the stuff ends up there. Or he used to because that stuff is at least 20 to 30 years old. At one corner of the lake we see a larger trail and a locked gate. On the other side was the horse stable at Kelly Plantation so he must have an access road down that backside of Kelly Plantation. It still doesn’t explain how the bus got there because it was back around the bend and parked like it had been brought in the way we came – and no way it came that route LOL
The only drawback was that there is a lot of graffiti there and every bit of it is about sex or drugs. I was REALLY glad Conner couldn’t read some of the stuff painted out there!
I took a few pictures but Troy needs to go back and really take some time to shoot some of the stuff out there. A pano would be fascinating. Hopefully we can clone out the graffiti. When we got home I looked at the spot on Google Earth and you can see that stuff from space and the parcel of land that it covers is massive! I’m very curious to find out who owns it and to hear the story behind it. Of course, I was trespassing and the owner may not want to call attention to what is actually a dump even if I thought it was a fascinating place full of incredible stuff. If the snooty hooty’s get wind of it he may have trouble so I have to find out who he is and then figure out how to get to talk to him about it.
This was probably the coolest cache so far to me because I found something so fascinating right in my own backyard. Airplane steps for pete’s sake LOL
I’ll bet he knows where I can get a tank LOL